That’s how the leader of the American irregulars at Concord and Lexington put it when the British showed up on April 19, 1775, after marching all the way from Cambridge to do battle with a large contingent of American irregulars.
When the first shot was fired – “The shot heard round the world,” thus began the American Revolution.
Three hundred and forty-six years later, America is the pre-eminent nation among all the nations in the world.
China is rising but it cannot compare simply because it has more people and a soon-to-be larger economy.
China is an enlightened communist dictatorship that directs its population with an iron fist to accept and to adhere to the regime’s disinterest in human rights and personal freedom.
We are the most powerful, glorious, wasteful, triumphant force for good on this earth because we are a democracy – an imperfect democracy – but a democracy, nevertheless.
We must all confront our history at this point because our society is demanding it.
When the British met the Americans at Concord in 1775, America was a slave-keeper democracy.
Everyone was created equal, as the writers of the Declaration of Independence put it so eloquently – that is – except if you were Black and a slave or both.
This has come back to haunt us during these severely revisionist times when we question everything about ourselves and our nation’s coming to be.
The recent spate of police killings of Black men and women, which appear to the studied eye watching television as executions, is causing deep unrest throughout the nation.
The jury decision in Minnesota that found police office Derek Chauvin, guilty of killing George Floyd may have prevented the nation from rioting and chaos as soon as it was announced.
Our police don’t really know what to do anymore.
They are being so second-guessed in doing what they are sworn to do that droves of police officers are quitting. The lunatic fringe among us is asking that we do away with the police or make the police impotent.
We need police. We need police to do the right thing. Executing Black people is not on this list.
Again, Patriot’s Day celebrates Americans taking on the British Empire and ultimately defeating it so we could stand alone.
We are no longer a slave-keeper democracy.
Our society is not perfect, but it works.
We aren’t slaughtering one another in the thousands or even the hundreds.
We have a problem with too many guns. This will be worked out.
If the folks at Concord and Lexington didn’t have their own muskets, the revolution could not have taken place.
We will survive whatever happens as we have survived as a working democracy for 346 years.
We will overcome all our differences, at some point, and America will live on in glory and abundance and with strength and honor.